Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats)

Recognising that the Minister feels there are implementation challenges with amendment No. 1, perhaps he will consider amendment No. 2 when we get to that stage, which has slightly different wording, or indeed, maybe he will commit to us that he will take on the essence of our amendments and bring forward his own amendment on Report Stage. We will be readily available to discuss the intricacies of that. The Minister stated that a plaintiff has the right to the final decision on whether there is jury or not. I thought a defendant could then take an appeal against that so there was the right to appeal. No one is saying that we want to have differential treatment when it comes to the right to freedom of expression versus the right to have a good name, but we will have that differential treatment by the removal of juries. The Minister mentioned the Special Criminal Court. He said some of us support that, but some of us do have an issue with the Special Criminal Court and its process of not having juries because it violates international human rights standards.

The Minister did not feed back on how he feels about the differential rights this will create and the implications for the Good Friday Agreement. That is important. The Government signed the Good Friday Agreement more than 25 years ago. The Government was rightly critical of the British Government for its flagrant disregard for the fragile peace we have in the North. Why does the Minister think it is appropriate to create differential rights on the island? Why did the Department feel it was okay to ignore the various recommendations we had from all the reviews and, indeed, the joint committee on justice in the previous term? Why were those recommendations not heard in the report?